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Hawaii holds dog owners to a negligence standard without the old one bite rule. Under HRS 663-9, the owner or harborer of a dog is liable for injuries the dog causes even if the owner never knew the dog was dangerous, and the Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals has read that statute to mean a victim must still show the owner failed to use reasonable care. So you do not have to prove the dog bit someone before. You do have to show the owner, or whoever was harboring the dog, was careless in how the dog was kept, watched, or restrained.
This page covers how that negligence rule works, what you must prove, Honolulu’s stray dog ordinance, who counts as an owner or harborer, the defenses written into HRS 663-9.1, Hawaii’s comparative fault bar, a child’s case, landlords, every deadline including the county notice rule, damages and the cap on pain and suffering, the statewide dangerous dog law that took full effect in July 2025, reporting and rabies in a rabies-free state, settlement value, and insurance.
Dog Bite Laws handles dog attack cases. Talk to us for free, and pay no fee unless we recover money for you.
Hawaii has a dog bite statute, but it is not a strict liability statute. HRS 663-9 has two parts. Subsection (a) says the owner or harborer of an animal that proximately causes injury “shall be liable in damages to the person injured regardless of the animal owner’s or harborer’s lack of scienter” of its vicious or dangerous propensities. Scienter is a lawyer’s word for knowledge. Subsection (b) makes an owner absolutely liable, but only for an animal “known by its species or nature to be dangerous, wild, or vicious.”
Dogs fall under the first part, not the second. In Hubbell v. Iseke, decided November 3, 1986, the Intermediate Court of Appeals held that subsection (a) “merely eliminates the necessity to prove ‘scienter’ as an element of an animal owner’s negligence.” It relied on the legislature’s own conference report, which said the 1980 law does not create strict liability and that dogs are not in the absolute liability category “since dogs are not generally of a known vicious nature.” The court’s conclusion: a person hurt by a dog “must still prove negligence on the part of the animal’s owner.”
What the statute did change matters a great deal. Before 1980, under Farrior v. Payton, a Hawaii victim had to prove the owner knew or should have known the dog was vicious, which is the one bite rule. The 1980 legislature called that result unacceptable, writing that court decisions “allow a dog his ‘first bite’ before an owner can be held liable.” Since then, the question is not whether the dog had a record but whether the owner acted reasonably.
So Hawaii sits between the strict liability states and the one bite states. You need no prior incident, only evidence that the owner fell short: an open gate, a dog let loose, or a known escape artist left unwatched.
The Hubbell court listed the elements plainly: the injured person “must prove duty, breach of duty, and damages,” but “need not prove the owner’s knowledge of the animal’s vicious propensities.” The statute adds causation, since the dog must have proximately caused the injury. Put together, a Hawaii claim has four parts:
Breach is a fact question for a jury, and Hubbell shows how it can go against a victim. The plaintiff there was attacked by three watchdogs after getting out of a car near a house on nine acres in Hauula. The dogs stayed near the house, which sat 350 feet up a driveway lined with three warning signs. The jury found the owners were not negligent, and the appeals court affirmed.
A prior bite, earlier complaints, or a dangerous dog declaration is not required. Hawaii law does give every owner of a dog that has bitten someone a specific duty: HRS 142-75 says that owner “shall have the duty to take such reasonable steps as are necessary to prevent the recurrence of such incident.”
On Oahu, the Revised Ordinances of Honolulu make it unlawful for the owner of any dog to permit it to become a stray, and section 12-4.1 defines a stray to include a dog on someone else’s premises without an occupant’s consent, or a dog on a public street, on school grounds, or in any other public place unless the owner controls it by a leash, cord, chain, or similar restraint not more than eight feet long. If the bite happened on Hawaii Island, Maui, or Kauai, check that county’s own ordinances.
In a Hawaii negligence case, a leash violation is evidence for the jury to weigh. The Hawaii Supreme Court held in Michel v. Valdastri (1978) that proof a defendant failed to meet a legal standard written to protect people like the victim “is admissible as evidence of negligence.” An earlier Hawaii case it quoted, Young (1938), said that when a municipal ordinance prescribes a duty for the safety of others, neglect of that duty “is evidence of negligence sufficient to require the question of negligence to be submitted to the jury.”
If police or animal control cited the owner, that citation is a dated, official record of how the dog reached you.
Honolulu revised its dog ordinances in 2026. Ordinance 26-9 repealed the city’s separate dangerous dog article and added new definitions to the dog rules, so confirm the current wording with a lawyer before relying on any single detail.
HRS 663-9 reaches two kinds of defendant: the owner and the harborer. Neither word is defined in that statute. Honolulu’s dog ordinance treats “every person owning, harboring, or keeping a dog or having custody thereof” as an owner for purposes of its dog rules.
Hawaii’s newer criminal dangerous dog law is more specific, and it helps show where to look. HRS 711-1140 defines an owner as anyone owning, harboring, or keeping a dog. It presumes that the parents or guardian are the owner when the owner is under 18, and that the person registered with the dog’s microchip company is the owner. Those presumptions are written for the criminal part of the law, not the civil claim, but they point to the records that identify who was responsible: microchip registration, county licensing, vet bills, and adoption papers.
More than one person can be responsible, and that matters for money. The registered owner may have no insurance while a parent or the household’s homeowner does. If you are not sure who had the dog, read what determines ownership of a dog.
One caution runs the other way. If you were caring for the dog yourself when it bit you, as a pet sitter, dog walker, or housemate, your claim raises questions that a casual bystander’s claim does not. Tell a lawyer about that role on the first call.
HRS 663-9.1 lists the situations in which an owner or harborer “shall not be liable for any civil damages,” notwithstanding 663-9. There are three:
The trespass exception has details worth knowing. A person on premises open to the public is there lawfully unless they defy a lawful order to leave given to them in person. But the statute also says a person is not licensed or privileged to be on premises where warnings “reasonably adequate to warn other persons that an animal is present” have been posted. That is why a Beware of Dog sign can matter in Hawaii, and why an insurer will ask whether you saw one. The statute still requires a finding that the entry was intentional or knowing, so a sign alone does not end a claim.
The word provocation does not appear in the civil statute. The closest thing is the teasing exception, which applies only if the teasing happened without the owner’s negligence, direction, or involvement. Hawaii’s criminal dangerous dog law has its own longer provocation list, but it is written for dangerous dog designations, not for your civil claim. For more background, read our guide to dog bite provocation.
Assumption of risk is not one of the listed exceptions. In a 2011 premises case, Steigman v. Outrigger Enterprises, the Hawaii Supreme Court held that the known or obvious danger defense “is no longer viable in Hawaii” and that courts may consider a known or obvious danger as a factor in the comparative negligence analysis instead.
Hawaii uses modified comparative negligence. HRS 663-31 says a victim’s own negligence does not bar recovery if it “was not greater than the negligence” of the person sued or, when several people are sued, “the aggregate negligence of such persons against whom recovery is sought.” The jury fixes everyone’s percentage, and the court reduces your award by yours.
Run the numbers. At 20 percent fault, a $100,000 verdict becomes $80,000. At 50 percent, your fault is not greater than the defendants’, so you collect half. At 51 percent, the statute directs the court to enter judgment for the defendant, and you collect nothing. Because the comparison is with the combined negligence of everyone you sued, naming every responsible party, such as both the owner and the person walking the dog, can change the result.
Hawaii also limits joint and several liability. Under HRS 663-10.9, each defendant in an injury case can be made to pay all of your economic damages, but a defendant found less than 25 percent negligent pays noneconomic damages only in proportion to its own share. That rule matters when one defendant has insurance and another does not.
Expect the owner’s insurer to argue fault from the first phone call: you reached over the fence, you walked onto the lanai, you did not see the sign. Those are arguments about percentages. Let a lawyer answer them, and do not guess at your own share in a recorded statement.
A child bitten in Hawaii gets more time than an adult. HRS 657-13 lets a person who was under 18 when the claim arose bring it within the normal period after turning 18, or at any time before. With Hawaii’s two-year limit, that means until the child’s twentieth birthday.
Parents should not rely on that longer clock for their own claims. In Kahale v. City and County of Honolulu (2004), the Hawaii Supreme Court held that the minority tolling provision “nowhere provides for the tolling of derivative actions.” Kahale began with a dog attack on a child in a park. The child’s claim survived, but the parents’ own claims for loss of consortium and emotional distress were barred because they were filed too late. Treat any claim of your own as a parent as a two-year claim from the date of the bite.
Expect the dog owner to raise your child’s behavior. The teasing exception in HRS 663-9.1 has no age line in its text, and it applies only when the teasing happened without the owner’s negligence, direction, or involvement. If an adjuster is blaming your child, read whether a child can provoke a dog, then talk to a lawyer.
Treat any settlement offer that arrives before anyone knows whether scar revision will be needed with suspicion.
Hawaii law offers two possible routes against a landlord or property owner, and neither is automatic. The first is the statute itself. HRS 663-9 reaches a harborer, not only an owner. The statute does not define harborer, so whether a landlord or property owner counts as one depends on the facts of what that person did with the dog.
The second route is ordinary premises negligence. The Hawaii Supreme Court held in Pickard v. City and County of Honolulu (1969) that “an occupier of land has a duty to use reasonable care for the safety of all persons reasonably anticipated to be upon the premises, regardless of the legal status of the individual.” Pickard was not a dog case. If a bite happens in a shared yard, a condo walkway, or a parking lot, the facts worth gathering are complaints made to the manager, earlier incidents, house rules about dogs that were never enforced, and broken gates the property owner was responsible for fixing.
These claims are fact-heavy, and they are still worth investigating after any bite at an apartment, condo, or rental home.
Two years, as a rule. HRS 657-7 requires an action for injury to a person to be filed “within two years after the cause of action accrued.” For a dog bite, plan on that clock starting the day of the bite.
Those are outer limits, and evidence fades long before them. Our guide to the dog bite statute of limitations explains how these clocks interact.
Hawaii’s dangerous dog law gives a useful vocabulary for what a bite does. It defines a bite injury as contact between a dog’s teeth and the victim’s skin “that causes visible trauma, such as a puncture wound, laceration, or other piercing of the skin.” For the felony offense, it borrows the penal code’s definition of substantial bodily injury in HRS 707-700, which includes “a major avulsion, laceration, or penetration of the skin,” a bone fracture, and a serious concussion. The injuries that come up in civil claims include:
Hawaii divides damages into economic and noneconomic loss. Economic loss covers medical and hospital bills, future care, lost wages, lost earning capacity, travel for treatment, and other out of pocket costs. The HRS 663-8.7 cap described below does not reach it. Noneconomic loss is defined by HRS 663-8.5 to include “pain and suffering, mental anguish, disfigurement, loss of enjoyment of life, loss of consortium, and all other nonpecuniary losses.”
Hawaii caps one piece of that. HRS 663-8.7 limits damages “for pain and suffering as defined in section 663-8.5” to $375,000. The definition it points to is narrow: “the actual physical pain and suffering that is the proximate result of a physical injury.” Disfigurement, mental anguish, and loss of enjoyment of life are listed as separate kinds of noneconomic damage, and the cap does not name them. It is not a ceiling on the whole case. It also does not apply to the torts listed in HRS 663-10.9(2), which include intentional torts and strict and products liability torts.
Punitive damages are possible against a dog owner whose conduct was far worse than carelessness. The Hawaii Supreme Court held in Masaki v. General Motors (1989) that they require wilful, wanton, oppressive, or malicious conduct, or “that entire want of care which would raise the presumption of a conscious indifference to consequences,” proved by clear and convincing evidence. Masaki was a products case, so how that standard applies to a dog owner depends on the facts. The State cannot be made to pay punitive damages under HRS 662-2, and the Hawaii Supreme Court held in Lauer v. YMCA (1976) that the City and County of Honolulu, “as a municipal corporation,” should not be held liable for them either.
After a fatal attack, HRS 663-3 lets the family recover for losses such as society, companionship, care, and guidance, and lets the estate recover the reasonable expenses of the last illness and burial. For more on each category, see dog bite compensation.
Hawaii did not have a statewide dangerous dog law until 2024. Act 224, approved July 8, 2024, added a dangerous dogs part to the penal code, now HRS 711-1140 to 711-1148. The offense took effect July 1, 2024. The sections on declaring a dog dangerous and on the owner’s duties took effect July 1, 2025. If you read older material saying the dangerous dog law is in chapter 142, that is out of date: HRS 142-74 deals with dogs that injure livestock and other property, and the legislature rewrote it for livestock in the agricultural district in June 2026.
A dangerous dog is “any dog that, without provocation, causes a bite injury to a person or another animal,” and breed is not to be considered. One unprovoked bite that breaks the skin can qualify. An officer may declare a dog dangerous on probable cause, based on the written complaint of a person willing to testify, the officer’s own observation, or other substantial evidence. The declaration is served on the owner, who has 30 days to contest it.
Once a dog is declared dangerous, the owner must microchip it, keep it in a locked escape-proof kennel when it is outside unattended, use a leash of four feet or less and a basket muzzle off the property, post warning signs, and spay or neuter it. Under HRS 711-1144, an owner whose dangerous dog bites because those rules were ignored commits negligent failure to control a dangerous dog, which carries a fine of $1,000 to $2,000, restitution to the injured person that can include counseling costs, and liability insurance or a bond of at least $50,000. If the attack causes substantial or serious bodily injury or death, it is a class C felony and the dog is euthanized.
For your civil claim, a declaration is evidence, not a verdict. HRS 711-1148 says the dangerous dog part does not stop an injured person from bringing a civil action. If the dog had already been declared dangerous, the owner was bound by the specific rules above, and a bite that happens because the owner did not follow them is itself an offense under HRS 711-1144. Separately, HRS 142-75 lets any person ask the district court for orders to prevent a repeat bite, including removal or destruction of the dog. Since a 2021 amendment, that action no longer requires proof that the dog bit on two separate occasions. Breed plays no part in a Hawaii designation.
Hawaii’s rabies picture is different from every other state’s. The Hawaii Department of Health says Hawaii “is the only state in the United States that is free of rabies,” and dogs and cats entering the state must follow import quarantine requirements. The department adds that cases of rabies in Hawaii have all come from exposures outside the state. Whether you need rabies shots is a question for your doctor.
Reporting still matters, for the claim and for the next person the dog meets. On Oahu, Honolulu Ordinance 26-9 (2026) says medical providers may report dog bites causing serious bodily injury to the Honolulu Police Department, which forwards each report to the city’s animal control contractor for investigation, and an officer decides whether the dog is dangerous. Under state law, the officers who can declare a dog dangerous include police and county animal control officers, so on any island the police non-emergency line and the county’s animal control agency are the places to report.
Do not wait for a doctor to file. Make your own report as soon as you can, describe the dog and where it went, and ask for the report number. That report is the dated, official record of what happened, and under HRS 711-1141 the written complaint of a person willing to testify is one of the bases on which an officer can declare a dog dangerous. Here is what happens after a dog bite is reported.
If the dog was a stray nobody can identify, or the owner cannot show its vaccination history, tell your doctor and read about being bitten by an unvaccinated dog.
The most widely cited insurance data does not break Hawaii out. For 2025, the Insurance Information Institute and State Farm reported a national average of $65,450 per dog-related injury claim across 28,450 claims. That is an insurance industry average across every claim, small and large. It is not a settlement value and it does not predict any one case.
What actually moves the number in a Hawaii case:
Our overview of dog bite settlement amounts explains injury levels, and the dog bite settlement calculator gives a rough sense of ranges.
The Insurance Information Institute says standard homeowners and renters policies typically cover dog bite liability up to the policy’s liability limits, usually $100,000 to $300,000, and that the owner is responsible for anything above the limit. The policy that pays may belong to a parent, a condo association, or a landlord rather than the person holding the leash.
Two Hawaii points. First, the dangerous dog law adds coverage in one situation. An owner convicted of negligent failure to control a dangerous dog must, unless the dog is euthanized, carry liability insurance or post a bond of at least $50,000. That requirement comes after a conviction, not at the time of the declaration, so most bite victims will not find it in place. Second, on breed: bills to stop insurers from refusing or canceling coverage because of a dog’s breed were introduced in the 2025 and 2026 sessions, including HB2011 in 2026, and none appears in the Legislative Reference Bureau’s lists of acts passed in 2025 or 2026.
Do not assume there is no coverage because of the breed, because the owner rents, or because the owner says so. Ask for the insurer’s name in writing, and let a lawyer deal with the adjuster, because the first call is usually about how the bite happened and your answers will be used to argue your share of the fault.
For the full sequence from start to finish, read our guide on how to file a dog bite claim.
Dog Bite Laws handles dog attack cases, and Hawaii is a state where the evidence decides the outcome. Because Hawaii requires proof of negligence, the work is in showing what the owner did wrong: getting the police and animal control records, finding earlier complaints and any dangerous dog declaration, checking the county leash and stray rules, identifying every owner and harborer, and locating every policy that might pay, including a landlord’s or condo association’s.
We deal with the insurer so that you do not have to, and we push back when an adjuster tries to shift fault onto you or your child. We work on a contingency fee, so there is nothing to pay to start and no fee unless we recover money for you. Founding attorney Michael Agruss built the firm around injury clients who need someone else to carry the paperwork.
We take dog bite cases across Hawaii, including Honolulu, Pearl City, Kailua, Kapolei, Hilo, Kona, Kahului, and Lihue. If you or your child was bitten, contact us for a free consultation. We will tell you honestly whether there is a claim worth bringing and how much time you have to bring it.
No. Hawaii uses negligence, but without the one bite rule. HRS 663-9 removes any need to prove the owner knew the dog was dangerous, and the Intermediate Court of Appeals held in Hubbell v. Iseke that the victim must still show the owner or harborer failed to use reasonable care. Absolute liability in Hawaii applies only to animals dangerous by their species or nature, and dogs are not in that group.
No. Hawaii dropped that requirement in 1980, when the legislature decided a dog should not get its first bite free. Since 2021, a single bite is also enough to ask a district court for orders to prevent another one under HRS 142-75.
Not by itself. Under HRS 663-9.1, a posted warning that is reasonably adequate can mean a visitor was not privileged to be on the property, but the trespass exception applies only if the trier of fact finds the victim intentionally or knowingly entered or stayed unlawfully. Places open to the public are treated differently. The sign will still be part of the fault argument, so talk to a lawyer before discussing it with an adjuster.
Generally two years from the date of the bite under HRS 657-7. A child has until two years after turning 18, though a parent's own claims are not extended. A claim against a county also needs written notice within two years under HRS 46-72, and a claim against the State must be filed within two years with no extension for minors.
Yes, as long as your share is not greater than the combined negligence of the people you sue. Under HRS 663-31, a jury assigns percentages and your award is reduced by yours. At 50 percent you recover half. At 51 percent you recover nothing, which is why fault arguments deserve a lawyer's answer.
Only on one category. HRS 663-8.7 caps damages for physical pain and suffering at $375,000. Medical bills, lost wages, and future care are outside that cap, and the statute's definition of pain and suffering does not include disfigurement, mental anguish, or loss of enjoyment of life, which Hawaii lists as separate kinds of loss.
That decision belongs to your doctor. The Hawaii Department of Health says Hawaii is the only rabies-free state, that imported dogs and cats must follow quarantine requirements, and that rabies cases in Hawaii have all come from exposures outside the state. Tell your doctor if the dog cannot be identified. Wash the wound well, get it examined the same day, and report the bite.
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